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LUG Meetings

Meet up with Montana Linux people on IRC. We currently gather at the #ubuntu-montana room on the freenode network. Stop in and say "hello" or even ask/answer some questions. Don't have to be a Ubuntu user either. Or use the web-based chat client.

BillingsLUG
The BillingsLUG hasn't had a meeting in a while but they are hoping to start back up real soon. Really.

BozemanLUG
The BozemanLUG meets on the FIRST Thursday of the month at 7PM

MSU-Bozeman
EPS Building, Rm 259
Bozeman, MT
Used to be the LAST Thursday, but we changed it.

Upcoming events

Cool Gear

Opinion: Red Hat and Fedora pay to secure boot?

I've seen a few articles today railing against Red Hat for their support of Fedora buying a key from Microsoft / Verisign so that in the future, Fedora will be able to boot on hardware certified for Windows 8 without having to dig into the BIOS to turn off secure boot. Some of them were just unhappy that an executive from Red Hat spoke about the situation in a somewhat positive fashion rather than being all pissed. Others are unhappy at the very idea that somehow their freedoms have been trampled on.

The issue isn't whether or not secure booting is the silver bullet for security issues... of course it isn't. Security is a multi-layer thing... and generally speaking, the more layers, the better.

The issue isn't that the key thingies cost a fortune, they don't. If I understand correctly, it's about $99 per Fedora release. That's $198 a year.

The issue is that everyone is pissed because this involves Microsoft... and Red Hat is seen as somehow giving in to Microsoft. Red Hat isn't giving in to Microsoft any more than they gave in to Akamai Technologies Inc when they bought an SSL certificate for www.redhat.com... or when they gave in to GeoTrust when they bought an SSL cert for the fedoraproject.org website. In each case a work around is available but they are just trying to spare users and customers a little bit of hassle. That's all.

Of course I'm a Red Hat fan boi, so what do you expect from me? Any questions?